The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
I keep reading things here that remind me that my situation is not unique. I am so thankful for all of you here. And the opportunity to ask for your ideas.
From your experiences what is up with the "A" when you write him a heartfelt letter regarding issues and he ignores it. I mean obviously he is ignoring the issues,.Or even one without "issues" that is an attempt at connecting to him and he ignores that too.
Do you
A. Never write letter in first place because then we might be controlling by sharing our feelings with the "A".
B. Say " I was hoping for a response to my letter" (expectations???)
C. Write the letter knowing you most likely will not get a response (and grow enough to not be sad when you don't)? Taken too far isn't that not caring for yourself-telling yourself it's okay to be ignored?
I know it's about him and his problem etc. that he doesn't want to express feelings etc. But it feels like rejection to me.
Okay anyone else have similar experiences with expressing feelings, verbal, letter, email etc. and getting no response? Is there some alanon skill etc. I'm not seeing that makes this better?
Well, I don't exactly know. In my experience, I have written many letters. Ah didn't give a hoot about any of them, unless there was something to argue about in them. I would write them and then not give them, and eventually I stopped writing them to him and started writing them to myself. Any and all of the normal couples counseling things that therapists suggested were wasted on us. I tried he didn't. I can't waste any more time on analizing him and why he does what he does. I have myself to focus on and love and the fact that he couldn't love me the way I know I need to be loved is no longer the point. I tried everything, I tried until I couldn't see straight. I tried so hard he walked away.
What are you willing to put up with, live with. What do you want? How do you want your heart to feel. Did you know that all of the answers and all of the love you are craving is right there within you? It is.
Writing those letters was like peeling back my skin and waiting for a sandstorm to hit. Not a very good thing for me to do for myself. Why did I give him a map of where exactly my buttons were and then expect him NOT to push them?
We say a lot in this program that A's are gonna do what A's are gonna do, and one thing they do is hide from feelings. They hide from their feelings. They hide from our feelings. I found that with my A that if I could share my feelings with no expectations I was ok. If I had expectations then I was trying to control him.
Serendipity is right about one thing for sure though and that is that if your A is not going to listen or will use it against you later, then he is not a good person to be sharing with. That is a going to the hardware store for bread kind of move. I would share with my counselor or Al-Anon sponsor or close friend I can trust. And that is part or our maturing in this program is learning to judge who is safe to confide in and who is not.
"C. Write the letter knowing you most likely will not get a response (and grow enough to not be sad when you don't)? Taken too far isn't that not caring for yourself-telling yourself it's okay to be ignored?" This isn't not caring for ourselves. It is not trying to force others to bend to our will/expectations. Not everyone will respond to what we do the way we want/expect.
Hope this helps. Take what you like and leave the rest.
In recovery,
__________________
~Jen~
"When you come to the edge of all you know you must believe in one of two things... there will be earth on which to stand or you will be given wings." ~Unknown
I have written several letters, including two to my oldest AD. I have never given them to her. Those letters are for me to get my feelings out and in front of me.
My sponsor has always told me, IF I do give the letters to the ones I am writing to, I do so without any expectations from them. The letter writing is for me, not them.
__________________
"If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience." - Woodrow Wilson
I came to the understanding that "clinging" to her ticked her off even more so all those peripheral contact devices had to stop. Detach completely...go silent self focus...attend only to my recovery cause anything else wasn't recovery. I came to accept that I had said what I had to say enough and that there was no other way to say it or present it so that she would, "understand". It was better for my sponsor to "understand" me and really could while the alcoholic had more problems with her life than most normal people would ever desire or dream about. I remember an incident when her response to me of "Leave me alone!!" really came thru and left me with the realization that she really did want me to leave her alone and I had to do that and go somewhere else and do something different. How could I live without my drug?!! How could I survive without my daily hit of my alcoholic?!! I didn't go cold turkey cause I was in this miraculous program of recovery. I did go thru withdrawals and they made me feel crazy and still didn't kill me...and I learned to "Leave her alone" and turn my attention on my own life and how I was living it and what needed to be change so that I could reach happiness.
Keep coming back (((((hugs)))))
Write a nice letter to yourself...in it say all the things you want the alcoholic to say to you only make them come from you.
I'll have to quote what my sponsor asks me sometimes when I contemplate confronting my AH on something (and to me, a letter explaining how I feel is simply another form of confrontation).
She tells me to pray to my HP and ask... "Okay, is this MY will, or God's will?"
Nine times out of ten, it's undoubtedly MY will, not my HP's will to write that letter.
I actually did that one time... I was just feeling soooo much sadness and pain and confusion, and my AH just will NOT talk to me at all about his feelings, and when I start to talk to him about MY feelings, he gets upset with me or interrupts me... so I was thinking... "Hey. A letter to him will let me get all my feelings across without his interrupting." So, I sat and wrote and cried and cried some more while I continued to write, and then halfway through the letter, I realized, "This is going to accomplish nothing. I bet if I asked my sponsor if it was okay for me to give this letter to my AH, she would tell me 'now is not the time'." So, I completed the letter as though it were addressed to him and as though I were going to actually give it to him... but I never did. I just tucked it away somewhere (I really can't remember where I put it now!), and just let it go.
It would have accomplished NOTHING. Once again it's that whole going to the hardware store for bread thing. I know if I'd have given him that letter that I would have expected for him to talk with me about it afterwards and it likely wouldn't have happened, or worse still, it would have just set my AH off and created a fight instead of an opportunity to sit and talk rationally.
I'm sure in the future, I'll get that urge again, to do the letter writing thing. I hope my HP intervenes again, though, and doesn't let it go through. Those kind of letters are just an ambush.
It's expectations, as it usually is. What do we really expect to happen, what do we hope for, when we write these letters?
I think what I was hoping was that he would 'get it' - realize how unhappy his behaviour was making me, and stop. As if the reason all the fighting, nagging, 'we have to talk' talks - as if everything else I had been doing for so long didn't work was that he just didn't understand what I was saying. Reality, of course, was that he did understand, and felt he couldn't do anything about it. If he were to really address my problems, he would have had to stop drinking, take responsibility for his actions, make a deep and real change to himself - in short, dive into recovery. He wasn't even beginning to be ready to do this, so the means I used to get my message across didn't make any difference. I could have rented a plane and written it across the sky, and he would have had to ignore it.
For us, the most useful thing we can do is accept that they are what they are. There is no magic button to push, that will get us access to the wonderful person we think is hiding inside. The wonderful person is enmeshed with the monster. The person we love is sick - badly damaged. We can use alanon tools to protect ourselves from what is bad, and learn to enjoy what is good, or we can get out. There is no "make it all better" option, and we just drive ourselves crazy looking for it.
This thread hit all kinds of buttons with me. I am a constant letter writer. Fortunately, I don't sendl MOST of what I write. Those thoughts are safe in my journals. The act of writing is very cathartic to me - and I get to sort most of those feeling just by writing.
Then there are those occasions when I hit the "send" button. My A is most uncomfortable with emotions. I've tried expressing the good, the bad, and the ugly to him. I've found that the good usually returns little or nothing from him. The bad returns some confusion, debate, and ultimately silence. And the ugly....well the ugly is just ugly and there is no point in that anyway. The "send" button is mostly reserved for the good in my case. Although, I must say - that since we've been "on again", I've held back. A lot. My heart wants to jump back in with both feet. My head (my program) is REALLY pulling the reigns back this time. For the first time ever - he's expressing more emotion than me. Which still isn't a lot, but what I get just blows me away. Cuz he's getting very, very little from me. Maybe I've entered his "comfort zone"???? I dunno. But I'm okay with things today.
Letter sending is treacherous territory. I think we always have expectations of the response. Always. Those expectations are what keep us sick. It keeps us caught up in the disease.
Are you being completely honest (no hidden motives) when you write? Think about your agenda when you are writing. Are you trying to win him over, tick him off, prove who's right? What's the reason for the letter? I say slow down and write the letter - but hold onto it for a week, then re-read it. Does it sound manipulative in any way? Remember that when they're reading a letter - they are not in your head and they don't necessarily know where you're coming from. They're ice cold on things. If you let your letter "get cold" and then re-read it, you'll have a better idea where they are when they read it.
Most of all I like Jerry's suggestion of writing a letter to yourself. Don't we all need that? That's the next letter I'm writing.
Thanks, glad for bringing this subject of letters up.....it was interesting to read the responses you got..... A few posts down I wrote about a letter I gave to my AB a couple of days ago. I have been crazy the past couple of days, obsessing over his ignoring my note, and just not even responding. Even today, I tried to talk to him to no avail. He just shrugs his shoulders and say he doesn't know to everything I asked him. I It is maddening. But I have realized throught the good people here who were kind enough to respond to my post and through my 2 f2f meetings that what was driving me crazy was ME and my expectations. I just bought the book or devotional, Courage to Change tonight and will start on it in the a,m..... I am wiped after the last couple of days driving myself batty trying to force a resp0onse from him. I can't change anything but me and my own expectations. Thanks again for asking such a good question. I needed this..... Have you been to any face to face meetings in your area? I learned SOOOO much from this board and the people at the newcomer's meetings...... I have a long way to go and it will be a daily struggle, but hopefully we can all be there for each other and make it a tiny bit easier.
